Can kangaroos swim?

When I asked a bunch of people at random, most people said they didn’t think
kangaroos could swim. ‘Not with those little arms,’ was the usual
response. Well, it turns out that kangaroos can swim. And surprisingly well, too.

The photo below is all real. It shows
a big male Eastern Grey Kangaroo swimming in water about 20 feet deep.

It plunged into the dam and swam at an impressive speed. In fact, you can see the
bow wave he’s making. It turns out that kangaroos are powerful swimmers when they
need to be.

Soon after swimming the length of that dam, it climbed onto dry land (getting up
the steep, slippery banks appeared to be much more challenging for the creature than swimming)
and then it took off. The next (smaller) image shows one very drenched roo leaving the scene
at full speed. If you look carefully you can see a lot of water falling off it.

Kangaroos use their powerful back legs when they swim, not in a jumping movement
but more of a dog-paddle movement. We shouldn’t be so quick to assume that their
forelimbs lack any strength or usefulness either. In the next photo you can get a better look at
another male Eastern Grey Kangaroo and those forelimbs are anything but puny. They
can even use them to hold another creature under water if it feels threatened or
challenged by it.

You’d swear this guy had been lifting weights but these proportions aren’t
unusual for a mature male Eastern Grey. And to put this into perspective, decent-sized Eastern Grey
Kangaroo males can stand more than 6 feet tall. The female roos though, are smaller
and lack the muscle size of the mature males.

A bit more trivia

I’ve been talking about male and female kangaroos. Well, a male kangaroo is
called a buck and a female is a doe. A young kangaroo’s called a joey and a group of them is
called a mob.